Principal Investigator(September 2013 to September 2015) UCCONNECT Transportation Student Fellowships for UCSB. US Department of Transportation. $100,000. This funding is provided for graduate students in the Transportation Emphasis at UCSB and allocated based on merit, study orientation in transportation, and intention to follow a transportation career. Principal Investigator. (April 2012 to September 2014) Business Establishment Spatial Evolution Microsimulation (BESEM). Sponsor: University of California Transportation Center/CALTRANS. $44,000. The ultimate objective of this initiative is to create software that is able to replicate the change in location of each business establishment in California as a function of its relationship with other business establishments and the transportation infrastructure connecting all businesses. This is a much needed method to: a) show the spatial correlation between business location (and implicitly jobs) and infrastructure by each business type at a microlevel; and b) compute activity opportunity based accessibility indicators that capture observed changes due to businesses moving into the state, moving out of the state, and relocating from one region to another. Schemata for each business type (medical, retail, legal) will be first developed and tested with real world data using point process statistical models and measures of centrality and clustering. In addition, economic efficiency and relocation behavior is also analyzed to discern patterns of regularity/stability and change. Eventually, models of location/relocation will be developed and used in simulating urban environments. The tasks include data assembly and assessment of quality, testing of spatial statistics models, creation of the simulator framework, and testing.Principal Investigator. (September 2014 to September 2015) Spatial Transferability Using Synthetic Population Generation Methods. Sponsor: : University of California Transportation Center/CALTRANS. $119,000. In this project we will develop a new method to transfer daily travel behavior data from one place to another. This fills a critical gap in practical applications that need data to study behaviors but also to estimate behavioral models. The basic ingredients of this new method are: a) the most recent California Household Travel Survey (CHTS) data that includes household and person characteristics and an one day place-based diary that spans an entire 12 month period in 2012 and 2013; b) a very detailed database of all the business establishments in California that enables computation of land use indicators at many geographical scales; and c) highway and public transportation networks connecting all the business establishments to all the CHTS participants. In the project we will first develop a classification system of the different determinants of household travel behavior and then use variables at the person, household, and spatial organization levels. Then, we will divide CHTS into two parts. The first will be used as the seed in synthetic population generation and the second to validate the new method. We will then perform experiments and find the best method to disseminate among practitioners.Principal Investigator(August 2006 to September 2014) UCTC Transportation Student Fellowships for UCSB. US Department of Transportation - University of California Transportation Center. $673,000. This funding is provided for graduate students in the Transportation Emphasis at UCSB and allocated based on merit, study orientation in transportation, and intention to follow a transportation career. Principal Investigator. (April 2009 to June 2013) SCAG Activity-based Travel Demand Model Development: Development of Simulator of Activities, Greenhouse (gas) Emissions, Networks, and Travel (SimAGENT). Sponsor: Southern California Association of Governments. Approximately $1,400,000. In this project in collaboration with Chandra Bhat from UT Austin and Ram Pendyala from Arizona State University, the requirements of California Senate Bill 375 and the regional transportation modeling guidelines are addressed by developing an activity scheduling model system and insert it into the overall model system of SCAG. The simulator includes population synthesis that recreates the entire resident population of this region, provides locations for residences, workplaces, and schools for each person, estimates car ownership and type as well as main driver for each vehicle, and provides other key personal and household characteristics. Then, a synthetic schedule generator recreates for each resident person in the simulated region a schedule of activities and travel that reflects intra-household activity coordination for a day. These synthetic activity and travel daily schedules are then converted to multiple Origin Destination (OD) matrices at different times in a day. These are in turn combined with other OD matrices (representing truck travel, travel from and to ports and airports, and travel generated outside the region) and assigned to the network in multiple periods in a day. The assignment output is then used in the software EMFAC to produce estimates of fuel consumed and pollutants emitted (including CO2) by different classes of vehicles. The overall model system also includes provision for finer spatial and temporal resolutions that is pilot tested using TRANSIMS and MATSIM. In addition, spatial allocation (geolocation) techniques are used to assign household to residential parcels and activities to all land parcels in a region. Moreover, testing of second by second vehicle emission estimation using the output of TRANSIMS and CMEM was also successful. Principal Investigator.(January 2009 to December 2012) Development of Next Generation Agent-based Simulation. Sponsor: UC Lab Fees Program. UC Office of the President. $870,000. In this project, realistic agents are created using observed and reported data from persons and their households including a variety of time use, activity participation, and travel surveys combined with large databases available from public agencies and private companies. Also key is the inclusion of weekly rhythms in the life of people, their interactions with other people within their strongest and most influential social network (i.e., the household), life cycle stages, and people’s complex interactions with the built environment. In this project, different modeling techniques are developed, tested, evaluated, and implemented to demonstrate them in applications. This project generated a base suite of tested models, provided core information for many new research proposals, strengthened the GeoTrans laboratory at UCSB, and offered unique opportunities for our graduate students in developing modeling and simulation careers.Principal Investigator. (April 2010 to June 2013) California Household Travel Survey Pre-test Design and Management Consultant. Sponsor: Southern California Association of Governments.$90,000. In this project Goulias with Dr. Morrison designed a pre-test for the California Household Travel Survey (an approximately 65,000 household survey) and developed a list of data items required for the modeling needs of California to address SB 375 policy questions today and to also prepare for new modeling needs in the future for large, medium, and small MPOs as well as CALTRANS. Goulias also supervised data collection efforts and analyzed outcomes using quality assurance and control techniques. Principal Investigator. (August 2009 to December 2010) Forecasting with Dynamic Microsimulation: Design, Implementation, and Demonstration (Year 22). Sponsor: University of California Transportation Center, $102,000. In this project we develop a new travel demand forecasting system that integrates demographic microsimulation with urban simulation and travel demand model systems. The basic ingredients of this new model system are: a) a dynamic demographic simulator designed and tested with repeated observations of the same individuals in another context that will be transferred to a case study in Santa Barbara, CA; b) a modified version of the recently finalized Urbansim model that will also be calibrated with data from Santa Barbara, CA; and c) travel demand models that account for intra-household interactions and path based accessibility that were estimated with data from California. The model system is unique because it combines within a day and across years human behavior dynamics and it will push the frontier of modeling and simulation one step further. A pilot test of land use models was tested in Santa Barbara, CA, and a strategy for next steps was developed.